Photo courtesy of Harlan YuPrinceton University graduate student Bill Zeller posted a chilling suicide note on his personal website and e-mailed the note to his friends before taking his life this week in his off-campus apartment.

PRINCETON — For most of his life, Bill Zeller kept his terrible secret close, hiding it from friends and classmates at Princeton University, the women he dated and the psychologists he once sought out for relief from the "darkness" that stalked him.

Earlier this week, shortly before a suicide attempt that would lead to his death days later, the 27-year-old doctoral student released his secret to the world, posting a 4,000-word note on the internet.

"My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly," Zeller wrote. "This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation."

The horror of the sexual abuse permeated every aspect of his life, souring relationships and destroying the self-worth of a man whom friends and colleagues described as a brilliant computer programmer who gave no public hint of his pain.

"Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up," he wrote.

Zeller, a fifth-year graduate student from Middletown, Conn., posted the letter on his personal webpage and e-mailed it to friends early Sunday, saying he wanted to explain why he was taking his own life.

Then he attempted suicide. Neither authorities nor university officials would disclose how. The Daily Princetonian, the university’s student newspaper, said emergency personnel found him unconscious in his campus apartment about 6 a.m. Sunday. Oxygen deprivation had left him comatose.

Zeller was removed from life support Wednesday evening, the newspaper said.

His suicide note — written over the course of a year — is at times emotional and angry, at times clinical and dispassionate. He does not name his abuser, reasoning it would make no difference to do so.

"I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway," Zeller wrote.

At one point in the note, he said he had been living with the memories for 23 years, suggesting he was 4 when he was first molested.

Facebook.comA portrait of Princeton University graduate student Bill Zeller, posted on a Facebook tribute page that was set up following his suicide.

Zeller grew up in central Connecticut, the son of fundamentalist Christian parents. His father, George Zeller, is an assistant pastor at Middletown Bible Church.

In his letter, Bill Zeller lashed out at his family, calling them intolerant of other religions and viewpoints and saying they kicked him out of the house at age 19 because he refused to attend church at least seven hours each week.

In a brief interview with the Hartford Courant, George Zeller said he did not want to discuss the suicide note.

"We love our son dearly," he told the newspaper. "God gave us a wonderful son for 27 years, and we are so thankful."

The public announcement of Bill Zeller’s intended suicide — the student told friends they could freely circulate his letter — comes less than four months after Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi announced on Facebook in September he was jumping from the George Washington Bridge.

The two men were otherwise very different. Clementi, 18, was just embarking on his college career. Zeller was nearing his doctoral degree, having established himself as a talented programmer who attended undergraduate school at Trinity College.

To escape his torment, Zeller wrote, he occasionally drank too much and immersed himself in programming, staying up for days at a time writing code. He found no solace in relationships, leading him to question whether he was gay. He determined he was not, that he was simply too broken to trust anyone.

"People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone," he wrote. "I know now that the darkness will never leave."

He also ruminated about what life would be like had he never been molested.

"I often wonder what life must be like for other people," he wrote. "People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great."